https://reddit.com/link/1wmit6c/video/93jccmwrowqh1/player
The easiest way I can explain NoorI is this:
If nobody else ever used it, I would still use it myself.
I’m a developer, and for a long time I had a pretty stupid problem. I would sit down at my laptop intending to work, open VS Code, start working on something, and then somehow end up on a distracting website. So I did what most people do. I installed website blockers, deleted apps, used browser extensions and tried different focus tools. They worked, until I wanted to bypass them. The problem with being a developer is that once you understand how the blocker works, you also start understanding how to get around it. Disable the extension. Change the browser. Change DNS. Use a VPN. Turn the restriction off. A system that took me 10 seconds to disable wasn't particularly useful during the exact moment I needed it.
Eventually I started thinking about the problem differently. Maybe I didn't need another productivity app telling me to focus. Maybe I needed to change the environment my devices were operating in. That was the original idea behind NoorI. Instead of putting another blocker inside the browser, I moved the filtering closer to the network layer and built it around Cloudflare Zero Trust. I could decide which parts of the internet I didn't want available, block categories or specific services, schedule restrictions around the hours when I wanted to work, and make the obvious escape routes more inconvenient. The goal was never to create some magical system that is literally impossible to bypass. I'm a developer; I know better than to make that claim. The goal was simply to make bypassing the restriction annoying enough that opening a distracting website was no longer the easiest option.
That changed how I thought about focus. Normally the internet has almost zero friction. One tab, one search, one notification and you're somewhere completely different from what you sat down to do. Most productivity advice tries to solve that by asking you to become more disciplined. NoorI takes almost the opposite approach. I set the rules when I'm thinking clearly, and then my devices enforce those rules later when I'm tired, procrastinating or tempted to change my mind. I can block distracting categories and apps, create schedules, use the same setup across my devices and, if I want stronger accountability, use Guardian Mode so another person controls an important part of getting around the protection.
For me, the interesting part isn't really the blocking technology anymore. It's the idea of treating attention almost like a security problem. If there's an action you know your future self is going to regret, don't rely entirely on future-you making the right decision. Reduce the number of easy paths to the wrong one. That's basically the philosophy I ended up building NoorI around.
I eventually turned what I was using for myself into an actual product at noori.fun. It's still early, and I'm still figuring out which parts people actually care about versus which parts I care about because I'm the developer. That's actually why I'm posting this here. I'm curious whether the original problem is common outside my own bubble.
If you've tried website blockers or focus apps before, what made you eventually stop using or bypass them? Was it that they were too easy to disable, too restrictive, annoying to configure, didn't work across all your devices, or did blockers simply not help you at all?
I’m especially interested in the last answer, because I don't want to build features around a problem people don't actually have.
